If it is known positively that some man has offered her his name and his troubles, and there is still no solitaire to be seen, the logical hypothesis is charitably advanced, that she has been “disappointed in love.”  It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but only the married are ever disappointed in love.

[Sidenote:  A Cause of Stagnation]

The married women who ask the questions and who, with gracious kindness, hunt up attractive men for the unfortunate young woman to meet, are, all unknowingly, one great cause of stagnation in the marriage-license market.

Nothing so pleases a woman safely inside the bonds of holy matrimony as to confide her sorrows, her regrets, and her broken ideals to her unattached friends.  Many a woman thinks her ideal is broken when it is only sprained, but the effect is the same.

Was the coffee weak and were the waffles cold, and did Monsieur express his opinion of such a breakfast in language more concise than elegant?  Madame weeps, and gives a lurid account of the event to the visiting spinster.  By any chance, does a girl go from her own dainty and orderly room into an apartment strewn with masculine belongings, confounded upon confusion such as Milton never dreamed?  Does she have to wait while her friend restores order to the chaos?  If so, she puts it down in her mental note-book, upon the page headed “Against.”

The small domestic irritations which crowd upon the attached woman from day to day, leaving crow’s feet around her eyes and delicate tracery in her forehead, have a certain effect upon the observing.  But worse than this is the spectre of “the other woman,” which haunts her friend from day to day, to the grave—­and after, if the dead could tell their thoughts.

If she has been safely shielded from books which were not written for The Young Person, Mademoiselle believes that marriage is a bond which is not to be broken except by death.  It is a severe shock when she first discovers that death changes nothing; that it is only life which separates utterly.

[Sidenote:  That Pitiful Story]

That pitiful story of “the other woman” comes from quarters which the uninitiated would never suspect.  With grim loyalty, married women hide their hearts from each other.  Many a smile conceals a tortured soul.  When the burden is no longer to be borne, a spinster is asked to share it.

A woman will forgive a man anything except disloyalty to herself.  Crimes which the law stands ready to punish rank as naught with her, if the love between them is untarnished by doubt or mistrust.  Any offence prompted by her own charm, even a duel to the death with a rival suitor, is easily condoned.  But though God may be able to forgive disloyalty, in her heart of hearts no woman ever can.

[Sidenote:  An Idle Flirtation]